


less never than alive

by hitlikehammers



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Post Iron Man 3, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They shared a bed—after <i>everything</i>—without sex.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>She’s missed a lot of signals over these past months. The sleepless nights. The calluses on his fingers, more of them, harder. The desperation in those eyes like acid and brimstone and aching and fear. The frustration she offered instead of compassion, understanding. The way his hands always gripped too tight. She’s missed a lot of signals.</i></p><p>  <i>But Tony saying no when she’s naked on top of him? That’s a neon billboard, that’s something even she can’t overlook.</i></p><p> <br/><b>Spoilers for Iron Man 3</b>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	less never than alive

**Author's Note:**

> The title belongs to E. E. Cummings.

“No.”

Pepper’s missed a lot of signals over these past months. The sleepless nights. The calluses on his fingers, more of them, harder. The desperation in those eyes like acid and brimstone and aching and fear. The frustration she offered instead of compassion, understanding. The way his hands always gripped too tight. She’s missed a lot of signals.

But Tony saying no when she’s naked on top of him? That’s a neon billboard, that’s something even she can’t overlook.

She frowns, feels her lower lip jut just a bit as she grinds her hips against him; she’s horny, has been ever since that night, ever since she’d cheated death and saved _her_ lover for a change; ever since her blood started running warmer and her heart started beating harder as a matter of course—she needs this.

He’s not even hard.

“Stop,” and Pepper doesn’t recognize the whimper that escapes her at the solemnity, the sadness in his eyes, in his voice—quiet, subdued. 

“We’re not doing this, Pep,” he breathes out, heavy. “I can’t,” and he goes silent, shakes his head, and she can’t help but ache when his hands cup the curve of her hips at either side, holding her still, pushing her back: she feels empty, fear and anger and anguish rising in her as she rocks back to sit on her heels, gives him the space he wants, maybe needs.

She’s boiling from the inside, until she looks closer, until she _sees_.

And perhaps that’s been the problem all this time: she’s been looking at her partner, her friend, and seeing everything she’d expected to see—the snark, the brilliance, the strength; the budding capacity to look beyond his narrow sphere of consideration, to offer trust to those closest to him; the ability to ask, to lean, to reach.

And that’s what he’s been doing, she realizes, as she takes in the look of him, sees all that she’s overlooked: the lines at the corners of his mouth, the hollow bruising near his eyes, the pallor, the jumping pulse at his throat, lit up blue in the glow of the reactor. He’s been needing, desperate, and he trusted her enough to show it, to beg her for something he couldn’t find, couldn’t make for himself.

Her Tony had been reaching for her, and she hadn’t even _seen_.

“I’m close, Pepper,” he tells her, a promise and a plea that lodges tight in her throat. “Another week at the most, I swear,” and his eyes, his body: the whole of him is begging for her to accept that, to believe in him, and when did things change so drastically, when did it stop being a given that, if Pepper believed in anything, it was and always would be Anthony Edward Stark?

“But I can’t risk it,” he breathes out, and his lashes are long; shadows in the dark as he watches her through them, cowed, and no—Tony shouldn’t be cowed, he shouldn’t fear anything, least of all her. “I don’t know what it could do, how it could happen, and if adrenaline feeds it, then...”

He trails off, looks away, and Pepper’s wronged him, Pepper’s harmed this thing between them more than she ever thought possible by simply doing nothing, but merely being blind.

She’s never felt so helpless, so hopeless, and there is a part of her that wants to run, wants to flee, before she has to watch him walk away, has to watch him do to her what she did to him: thoughtless, salt in open wounds, and her eyes burn, her throat clenches —there is a part of her that needs to protect herself from that one unthinkable scenario: Tony, leaving. Leaving _her_.

There is the whole of her, however, that’s stubborn, a fighter. There’s the whole of her that will grapple tooth and nail for this man, that will beat back death, that will hope against terror and deserts and wormholes and all unthinkable odds because she’s never been in love like this; she’s never looked at anyone and forgotten how to breathe, only to learn anew each and every time.

So Pepper does what she knows: she fights, she surrenders, she falls into Tony and gasps out a sob when his arms come around her without a second’s hesitation; when he grabs onto her and exhales shaky against her skin, when her heat calms to match his heat and her heart hums for relief and nothing else, nothing more sinister—she feels the world tilt back to rights when he kisses her temple and shudders beneath her: he is close, he wants her close in kind; she can keep him, he still needs her.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” she whispers, and he holds her closer, presses her into his side, against his chest, and her cheek rests just to the left of the reactor, her fingers tracing the ellipse of its line to the right. If she cries, he says nothing; when _he_ cries, she’s silent, and her chest aches, her stomach churns.

“I’m so _sorry_.”

Tony leans down, the stubble on his chin catching in her hair as he presses his lips to the crown of her head, as he breathes her in, the cadence uneven but his hand is firm between her shoulder blades, grounding her, guarding her, loving her.

 _Loving_ her.

He will forgive her, she knows. He will hold her until she forgives herself.

They’ll be okay.


End file.
